


familiar faces

by mako_lies (wingeddserpent)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Family Dynamics, Gaara-Typical Violence, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Memories, Obedience, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-19 14:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7364440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingeddserpent/pseuds/mako_lies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaara is going to be the next Kazekage. Somehow, Kankuro's having an easier time with that than his brother's new outlook.</p><p>(Or: Kankuro escapes the hospital only for Gaara to offer comfort. There is history here.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	familiar faces

**Author's Note:**

> This work contains: power dynamics between the brothers, rape imagery (but no actual rape), past trauma, and past violence.

He is free four hours, which is just enough time to get showered and painted and three reports in, when Gaara appears suddenly as he ever does. Kankuro peers over his mountain of _you-spent-too-long-in-the-hopital-dumbass_ paperwork, and he absolutely considers rising for the almost Kazekage. The future Kazekage. But his world tilts just _thinking_ about it, so he stays put. Better not to show weakness.

Gaara’s face is impenetrable in a way Kankuro can’t read. Without that familiar murderous glint, he’s become harder to anticipate. The failed attack on Leaf stripped Gaara of the pieces of him Kankuro understood. Years of playing roulette with his brother’s whims have left Kankuro floundering with Gaara’s new desires (or lack of them)—

_ten years old to Gaara’s nine. The sands hot with anger. ‘Let me touch,’ he demanded, with his sharp little voice, eyes hollow with exhaustion heavy-dark underneath, but no—no, greed and possession, Kankuro didn’t let Gaara touch what was his. Tugged back on Crow’s strings. So Gaara took. He took. Heated sand crept up Kankuro’s throat, abrading—curling like fingers, gently then all at once. Cut off his air as the strings fell slack. Crow slumped as Kankuro screamed, Temari covering her mouth with her hands. Gaara didn’t look at Kankuro as the blood stained the sand. No, Gaara combed his small, twitching fingers through the felt of Crow’s hair. Touching anyway—_

“Gaara,” Kankuro says, swallowing with a throat still rough by his brother’s seal, hidden though it is by his high, dark collar. Neither he nor Gaara needs any reminder of the past, no matter what scars lurk beneath the surface.

“You should rest, Kankuro,” says Gaara without intonation. “Isn’t that what you always suggest?”

It might be mocking. Some barb for all those times Kankuro told Gaara to just rest his eyes (even if he couldn’t actually sleep). But Kankuro can’t tell—Gaara’s attempts at humor before were served with maniacal laughter and flying entrails. But Kankuro takes a risk, testing this new Gaara. “I’m fine, little brother. Just want to finish this. I’m seriously not tired”—

_five days wasted in the hospital. The new puppet hadn’t worked quite as well in combat as Kankuro wanted, and the conspirator had managed to toss Kankuro from the window with kunai embedded deep in his chest. The man’s voice had been raspy from Kankuro’s poison: “that monster won’t be Kazekage. The Sand will never see it so.” Death would be painful, Kankuro knew, but not painful enough. He needed to make a worse poison for people who thought the Sand would ever reject Gaara. For thinking the Village wouldn’t benefit from Gaara. That Kankuro wouldn’t fight till the end to protect his brother. He’d smashed hard into the ground, blood spilling farther—Gaara found him moments later as Kankuro barely heard the death cry from above. His brother’s sand curled almost soothingly, protectively around Kankuro as it hefted him to the hospital—_

“You’re not tired?” Kankuro half-expects anger, but no. There is no sand creeping up the vulnerable curve of Kankuro’s throat. One of Gaara’s eyebrows twitch, but not the full-faced motion that means he’s going to start throwing around sand coffins. Hopefully.

“Nope,” Kankuro retorts with more gusto than he feels. His whole body aches, and his stitches tug. Medicine has always made him feel sluggish, untrusting, so he’s skipped it. The pain makes itself known. Maybe he is a little tired, but Kankuro knows better than to admit it.

Gaara’s mouth slants into a small smirk that’s a naked version of the one Kankuro practices in the mirror. The family resemblance has always been strong—

_five when he noticed that at dusk, everyone who saw him flinched away like they didn’t during the day. Temari didn’t have the answer, but Kankuro didn’t have to wait long. One of the kids—he’d been trying for weeks to work up the courage to make friends with her—she called him ‘monster,’ and that’s when he realized—she thought he was Gaara. Desperate, fearing to be feared, Kankuro found where Mom’s old cosmetic bottles had been packed away—_

Today, the resemblance doesn’t chill Kankuro’s skin. Instead he feels close to Gaara, whatever that means. “You don’t look tired,” Gaara says, and it nearly sounds like a concession. Except Gaara can’t have changed _that_ much. No way. “But you’ve put the paint on. Bare yourself, and we’ll see.”

Kankuro freezes, hand hanging where he’d been about to reach for a report—

_familiar. This is familiar. ‘Show me your face,” Gaara’s intense gaze fixed on the protective, shielding lines on Kankuro’s skin. Gaara was unsatisfied (and thus dangerous) until the paint was wiped away, and Kankuro stood open for his brother’s cold attentions. Open until his brother sated his thirst for intimacy, and Gaara left wordlessly—_

Could he refuse now? Could he ultimately ever deny Gaara anything? (Even back then, choked half-dead on Gaara’s sand, Kankuro couldn’t deny his love. What could he feasibly deny now?)

Still, the body obeys on instinct.

He gropes for the alcohol-based cleanser he keeps on hand for times he needs to re-do his makeup at his desk. This desk they’ve given him in preparation of Gaara becoming the Kazekage. Everything Kankuro has, everything Kankuro is, it can all be traced back to Gaara. It should really bother him more.

Kankuro wets a purple-stained cloth with the cleanser. His hands feeling heavy the way strings never make him feel. Strange to be the puppet instead of master, but such is his life and his brother.

The weight of Gaara’s inspection hangs physically on his skin as he opens himself. Familiar, this prickling intent on his flesh is achingly familiar, but where is it they stand? Where does Kankuro stand in his brother’s estimation, if it’s no longer that fragile precipice before the fall? If he’s no longer supposed to wait for the sand to wear the flesh off his bones?

Kankuro keeps his eyes on Gaara’s flat-glass ones while he wipes away the lines he drew to separate himself from his brother. A scant protection, to be removed by so few words. His knuckles brush the bob of his throat, catching on his slow swallow.

Gaara never moves. Barely blinks as Kankuro lifts the last line. It leaves Kankuro bare and unable, ultimately, to turn his face from Gaara’s scrutiny. Heat curls up his skin as he tries to still his fingers. They twitch. His fingers do. With the motion, he could shield himself with Salamander. Could distract Gaara with Crow. But Gaara will not be deterred, and Kankuro had believed himself past shame. Red-faced, he stands defenseless before his brother. Slowly, slowly, Gaara lifts his hand—the way he used to, then, that fixed, intent gaze on his target, then that crushing weight, the blood oozing out the pores of the sand, is this where they are, is this where they stand, has Kankuro hesitated too much, shown too much distaste of his own face that mirrors Gaara’s own?—but no—no. Gaara simply trails his fingertips over the revealed bruises beneath Kankuro’s eyes. They’re visible now, like all the rest of him—

_it had been the first thing Kankuro begged the merchant to teach him. ‘How do I erase the darkness under my eyes?’ he had asked, and she had hesitantly showed him the skill, the base to apply before drawing the thick purple lines. The best way, after all, to remove doubt that he was different than Gaara was to remove the bags under his eyes. That was what people knew about Gaara, first and foremost. Well, apart from the demon thing—_

Shame turns his gaze from Gaara’s. He has been caught out. Lost this game as he’s lost all the others. “You are tired,” is all Gaara says, fingers cool against Kankuro’s over-heated skin. Surely Gaara can feel the heat coming off him, unless the sand protects him from this, too, this sharp, intimate moment that Kankuro’s forced upon them. If so, Kankuro envies him—that Gaara can be shielded while Kankuro’s given up all his protection. Kankuro says, softer this time, voice rasping with closeness, “I want to finish this.”

“You need rest. Go, Kankuro.”

“That an order, little brother?” the question biting in the way Gaara has dug his claws into Kankuro’s chest and pulled and pulled and pulled and never stopped pulling.

“Must it be?” asks Gaara, harshly enough Kankuro has to look at him again. He’s starting to grow into their father’s voice. Their father’s seat. Gaara pulls his fingers from Kankuro’s cheek, and the loss of contact is nearly worse than the original touch. Gaara’s eyes narrow. “Go.”

Still, the body obeys on instinct.


End file.
